crackinwax said:
I know this is off-topic to the thread itself, but felt compelled to respond to this part of the conversation. I have no doubts that Disney wants a 40th Anniversary release, however there is at least one tall hurdle to clear.An article from ScreenRant published on September 19 2015 states that Twentieth Century Fox owns distribution rights to Episodes I-III; V; and VI until 2020, and owns the distribution rights to Episode IV indefinitely. If that article is accurate, any meeting between Disney/Fox and Verta would have to be awfully productive. That’s not to say that an original trilogy re-release is impossible, of course.
I’ve never understood this argument either. Companies make deals to release compilations of things - music, movies, etc. - where rights ownership is split all the time. Fox wants to squeeze as much money out of Star Wars as they can before Disney gets most of their rights, so if anything this fact supports a release. Yet for some reason people throw it out there as though it proves there will never be a release. Wat. Remember, it wasn’t Fox, just Lucas, that stood in the way of an OOT release. Even the rest of Lucasfilm wanted it. Now that Lucas is out of the picture I have no doubts that it will happen. Yes, legal issues will have to be sorted out, but it’s not like that is some kind of insurmountable hurdle or anything that has not happened before. It happens all the time. Two massive corporations that want to make money will make an arrangement to do so that satisfies both parties. Hell, they’ve already re-issued the Blu-rays and released them digitally since Disney acquired Star Wars, and the 20th Century Fox fanfare/logo was stripped out. Disney’s obviously already done whatever they have to do legally to release the films. There is hard proof of this. This is a total non-issue, even moreso than the unsubstantiated idea that Lucas put in some kind of clause that he wouldn’t have had any power to do.